Spring Festival Eve dinner, a reunion dinner, also called "tuanyuan fan" in Chinese, is an extremely important dinner. "tuanyuan" means "getting together". Wherever they are, people will try their best to go home just for this "tuanyuan fan". This reunion dinner is held on Spring Festival Eve where members of the family, near and far, get together for celebration.

This custom is also called "surrounding the hearth," from the custom in earlier times of eating dinner around the family hearth. The dinner begins only after all of the family members are present at the table. A table setting is placed for those unable to come home for dinner on this day to symbolize their presence though far away. Spring Festival Eve dinner is best eaten slowly, savoring the flavor of each dish. The dishes are always rich and delicious. There is a dish of fish is unnecessary. Eating fish has a special meaning. In Chinese it means "niannianyouyu". Because fish in Chinese means "yu", eating "yu" symbolize "Surplus Year after Year".

With the changes of society and the improvement of the level of people¡¯s lives, there is a new form of the Spring Festival Eve dinner. Once the reunion dinner was held at family, now more and more people have this special dinner at restaurant. Having the Spring Festival Eve dinner surrounding the table is the eternal custom during Spring Festival.

At Chinese New Year a reunion dinner is held on New Year's Eve where members of the family, near and far, get together for celebration. The New Year's Eve dinner is very large and traditionally includes chicken and pork. Fish is also included, but not eaten up completely (and the remaining stored overnight), as the Chinese phrase ("every year there is fish leftover") is a homophone for phrases which could mean "be blessed every year" or "have profit every year", since "y¨²" is also the pronunciation for "surplus". A type of black hair-like algae, "fat choy"("hair vegetable"),which is in Cantonese, is also featured in many dishes since its name sounds similar to "prosperity. Hakka will serve "kiu nyuk" and "ngiong tiu fu" . Because the things sound alike, the belief is that having one will lead to the other, like the old child's aphorism "step on a crack, break your mother's back".